U.S. Pat. No. 4,651,834 issued Mar. 24, 1987 describes a thermal ice penetration method and apparatus for melting a hole through ice preferably utilizing thermal-chemical heating by exothermic reaction between water supplied at least in part by the melting ice and a thermal-chemical reactant, preferably lithium and/or other alkali metal or alkali metal alloy. A number of ice penetration systems and devices are disclosed in this patent all of which utilize thermal ice penetration employing the exothermal reaction technique to achieve thermal ice penetration for deploying payloads such as sensors, transducers, antennas, instruments, weapons or the like through polar ice either downwardly from above the ice surface into the water below or upwardly from the underside of the ice through the ice to the atmosphere above the ice surface.
Other approaches have been investigated to deal with the problem of penetration of thick polar ice; however, all of them including those using thermal-chemical reaction, water jet drills, kinetic energy penetrators, etc., have met with limited success. The existing thermal-chemical ice penetrators such as those disclosed in the above-noted U.S. Pat. No. 4,651,834 have proven to be too slow for most applications (taking upwards of twenty minutes to pass through ten feet of ice) and do not appear practical for the rapid delivery of large payloads through thick ice surfaces. While water jet drills are capable of rapid ice penetration, the delivery systems employing water jet drills are quite complex and costly and are not practical for creating large diameter holes. Kinetic penetrators also have been used and are capable of rapidly penetrating thick arctic ice cover, however, they are very heavy and the payload must be shock hardened to survive the penetration impact load which makes this technique tremendously expensive.
In order to overcome the disadvantages and shortcomings of the known ice penetrating methods and systems, the present invention has been devised.